


Private Concerts

by faithlethalhane



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-15
Updated: 2015-02-15
Packaged: 2018-03-13 02:39:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3364634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faithlethalhane/pseuds/faithlethalhane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Laura knows how to play piano, but she can’t sing. So she sits at the student lounge and just plays. Carmilla watches sometimes. She can't help it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Private Concerts

Ever since the giant mushroom incident, Laura disappears sometimes. Wednesday nights to be specific. Which, normally you wouldn’t be too suspicious about, but her Wednesday nights used to be dedicated to Danny the Amazonian. Your nose curls at the thought of them sitting down in that stupid little open 24 hours diner with a different slice of pie between them every week. But, you know that’s gone to shit so where would she go?

Normally it’s beyond your morals to stalk people. They’re not worth the guilt you’d feel if you ever did. Following someone in the shadows of the night like the…creature of the night you were. It didn’t suit you. Clichés made your skin break out.

But one day the curiosity gets the better of you and so when she stands without warning, doesn’t grab anything but her jacket as she goes for the door, you have to follow. With everything crazy going on you just want to make sure she’s being safe. You’re not protecting her. God no. Just making sure she doesn’t need protection.

If she did, though your gut really hated you for admitting it, you’d probably call up ginger lap dog to go snarl at whatever danger Laura was getting into.

For a super-sleuth detective, though, she isn’t very paranoid. Not very aware of what’s behind her because even with your hundred paces behind, she doesn’t even hesitate. At all. Ever. You suppose your footsteps are…lighter than the average bear, but who wouldn’t at least check over their shoulder a couple of times in the dead of night at Silas University.

She turns the corner and you know exactly where she’s going. And you sigh.

Of course this tiny little idiot is going right for the theater arts building. Of course she’s walking right for the big doors with the brick walls singed with the ash of those sky high flames that’d been there not a week ago.

Just…

Of course.

You roll your eyes and slip through the big oak door before it slams shut with heavy finality. She’s quicker on her feet in here. Quicker to cut down halls with her head ducked down. You’re just lucky her heels are loud because even you can’t be silent on tile with huge vaulted ceilings. The echoing clacks of every step give you a cadence to run with, and you hear the creak of a door right after she rounds a corner. You have to run to make it through the quickly disappearing gap, but you do, and you find yourself in a storage room of sorts.

It’s full of miscellaneous stage props and racks and racks of costumes from previous years. You actually recognize some from the last time you were here. (Do not judge. The world gets lonely when your friends keep disappearing. Sitting in the back of every musical performance at least killed some time.) You like the room. It’s got a lot of nooks for you to hide in, with columns of boxes and carved wooden displays.

But there’s enough room for you to see her weaving through the junk very deliberately.

She stops at a piano, tucked away in the far corner.

Your head tilts in curiosity and watch as she sits down, runs her fingers along the keys in affectionate familiarity, and starts to play.

It strikes you as odd, to watch her play. The old bench that accompanies the piano is old enough that it does not adjust, and her toes barely touch the pedals, but she strains to press them every time, only sometimes failing as her fingers twirl out a classical tune you couldn’t ever forget. Schubert. You exhale a tired laugh. A laugh heavy with too many years.

You met the man.

And you can’t move. No matter how badly you want to just leave, knowing now what she does is not, surprisingly, dangerous. But the sounds and the sights keep you rooted with your feet on the ground, neck craned ever so slightly to the right to get the best view of her that you can.

It’s beautiful.

When the piece ends, your body tightens in preparation to run. But she doesn’t turn to leave. She just sits there and waits, fingers trilling two notes listlessly as she thinks. Then, slowing the back and forth tipping of her hand, she glides smoothly into another song, another emotion, another moving line of notes of a new and different piece.

You watch for a few minutes longer, than adrenaline of almost being caught still coursing deep in your skin, making even your hands a little unsteady. And, the whole trance of the thing broken, you slip quietly out the door. For a few moments you stand in the darkness of the hallway, the muted sounds of Laura’s playing still echoing through, dampened by thick concrete walls.

You inhale, but it’s stuffy. Closed. Air that hasn’t seen life in dozens of years, and you have to get out.

So you run.

Through the twisting halls and back through the front door of that Godforsaken building. It’s probably as condemned as you are.

You walk the long way back to the dorm, hands in pockets and chin tipped up at the sky to embrace the only good thing Silas has to offer. An unmuted sky of stars. Untainted by the bright lights of other cities, other towns, because in the middle of nowhere, the sky is, essentially, just a fraction closer to you.

You get back and grudgingly bury yourself in a book you’ve read five thousand times. Once when it was published three decades ago and 4999 times when you had to look preoccupied so Laura wouldn’t know you were listening.

But hell, that’s the point of fronts.

They’re a pain to put up and an even bigger hassle to maintain.

You’re lucky you didn’t linger more than you did outside, for no more than five minutes later Laura comes back, hair all frazzled from the nighttime wind gusts.

You look up the same moment she glances to you, and both of you stare for a moment before you both look away. She to the ground and you to your book.

“Hey,” you mutter as roughly as you can manage.

“Hey,” she replies back half-heartedly.

She shrugs her jacket off of her shoulders and hangs it up on its proper hook and everything’s the way it usually is. She spends an hour talking to her camera about nothing, showers, orders delivery, and then pesters you with stupid questions she knows she won’t get answers to. You flirt. She either doesn’t notice or promptly ignores, and while part of that makes you laugh, something also clenches a little tighter in your gut.

In the weeks to come, you try and avoid her Wednesday nights. You try and sit in your room and pace and sit on her bed but for some reason you just can’t stay away. And after a few weeks of fighting you give up and go to that little room in the back of the theater department and listen to her play.

She doesn’t have a specific taste when it comes to music, you discover. Or at least not in her range of playing. She does classical and contemporary, old and new pop culture, anything there’s a piano part for, she tries.

The thing that gets you the most, though, is that she doesn’t sing.

Perfectly understandable when there aren’t any words, but you can hear her, soft and under the building volume of the melody, humming the vocal line. But that’s all. Nothing more. Sometimes you see her mouthing the words, but never with any force behind it.

The first time she plays a jazz song, you don’t expect it. You’re scrawling bullshit on your cognitive psychology worksheet and she plays the first riff and you already know what’s coming but it still surprises you.

It’s not a part of her regular regimen.

And in that moment it sweeps you away, like jazz always has. Ever since you first heard it.

Your head whirls with the melody, notes wrapping around your vision and pulling you away, dragging, actually. You can feel it melding into your body, and your eyes close, your head drops in slow beat to the rhythm, but in languid kind of rolls, your shoulders following a similar motion. It’s just so liquid, the music and the notes sinking deep into your skin until you can feel your heart, weak in its feeble half-beating, but it’s there. And you can feel it. And you can’t help the way your torso just rolls with the passing bars, how your chest physically aches with something like it always has.

But the music stops in a clash of mismatched notes, like palms flat on the keys, and your eyes shoot open. She’s looking right at you and you’re looking right at her and you’re stuck there. Frozen. You cannot, for the life of you, find any strength in a single muscle to make a move for the door. Or to make a move for her.

She stares at you long and hard with those adorably over-intense eyes and they make you smile before you can stop yourself. Her eyes open a little wider in surprise, and you think maybe she’s about to yell at you. Instead she stares a few more seconds, glances away nervously and then back to you. And then she promptly turns back to face the piano.

Her fingers hesitate over the keys and you grin down at your lap. She’s never hesitated before and she’s nervous, despite her best efforts to appear nonchalant you can see right through it.

She shifts her weight on the bench, licks her lips, and places her fingers on the keys. And you wait before she’s a good minute into the song before you slip away. That’s not a confrontation you want to have. And this time you don’t go back to the dorm. You find that tree that’s been there for years and years, and you’ve sit in it so many times you swear it’s grown to fit your body. And in the chilly air of the night you just sit there, eyes closed, breathing in the completely fresh air of the world and staring up into the partially obstructed sky.

You love this place. And you’re glad no one ventures off late at night so that you can be alone.

…

…

…

You pretend to ignore her, once you know she’s there. It’s difficult, but you do. You play just like you did before, whatever you feel like, for however you long you want, and then you go home. She doesn’t walk back with you. She’s always gone before you finish, but you never hear her leave.

Then one day she’s not sitting behind you in the far corner, she’s instead sprawled out beside the piano, using one of the legs as a prop for her back.

You make a habit of watching her. You miss a lot more notes but you just can’t help it. You can’t stop wondering what keeps her coming back, what keeps her interested even though you can’t see anything but apathy in that disaffected face of intent concentration as she reads.

Sometimes her head perks up when you change songs, but you blink and her nose is once again buried deep in her studies and you think maybe you were imagining things.

But time reveals all secrets. And your patience and attention pays off. You learn a few Pat Benatar songs and every time you play them her foot taps, steady out of the corner of your eye. When you play classical her eyes flutter closed for just a second and she inhales deeply. When you try newer pop songs her shoulders stiffen (and you rush to get through the piece). But those aren’t your favorite responses.

God no.

When you play jazz?

She melts. Like chocolate in your hands or maybe metal into something molten and pliable. Her head lulls back until she’s smoothly nodding it to whatever rhythm you decide to play. Even when she’s sitting down she manages to move her shoulders with the moving beats. She chews on her lip sometimes, eyes closed and head swaying like she’s somewhere else and it captivates you. She’s so reactive. So…opposite of anything you’ve seen of her but also exactly the same.

The same quiet sullen girl, just as cool, but not as disaffected as you once thought.

Sometimes you hit a wrong note and it pulls her back to reality with a snap of her neck and a hunching of shoulders as she sinks back down into her book and into stillness.

You fear that maybe the more she catches herself slipping, the further away she’ll run. Because that’s so her. Hide until she can’t hide anymore and then close up to tightly you couldn’t get close to her with a ten foot pole and the Jaws of Life.

So you ease up on the jazz, only play it once in a while.

It’s so strange. She’s so strange. She’s not protecting you. She barely seems interested in you. But there she is, every Wednesday.

And one day, after you’ve discarded your backpack, arranged yourself on the bench, all ready and prepared to pour your stupid feelings into this stupid piano, she stirs. You freeze up like if you let on you’ve noticed she’ll run.

She stretches, makes the cutest little mewling sound, and rolls over to stand. You sit stiffly, unmoving as she walk the few steps over to you and collapses herself down on the bench beside you.

You look over and everything on your face probably reads as horribly confused because she smirks at you, then raises her eyebrows.

“Don’t let me get in your way, cupcake,” she says all smooth and low and easy. “I’m just here for the ride.”

You can’t do anything but stare at her for a minute because…what?!

Her stare so calm on you has you flustered. Like, beyond flustered. Your mouth opens and a noise of half protest comes out before you snap it closed. She laughs airily. It only makes your eyes widen and your cheeks run a little hotter.

Swallowing down all the things you want to argue, you turn to face the keys. You stare at them just as hard as she stares at you, but the difference is you can feel hers, burning into the side of your face, and it’s so overwhelming you almost can’t think of a piece to play. But you grab a classical piece out of left field, and when you sneak a glance over, you catch a flash of a smile, a reminiscing one.

But she looks at you and immediately you look back to the keys. The sudden movement makes you miss a note but you plow through anyway.

The piece escalates and the more you have to reach over her to play them; your elbows lock and your playing gets choppy, forced and not fluid. You curl your hands at awkward angles just so you won’t brush her hands with your arms, you drop some of the piece down an octave, just so you don’t have to lean closer to her, much too aware of her body heat and how you’d have to press your leg to hers.

It’s self-conscious playing. Much too flat because you’re not even focusing on the music at all because you’re too busy focusing on her. On her breathing and on her posture, and on making sure that you do not, under any circumstances, come in contact with any part of her at any time.

And when you struggle pathetically through the end of the song, she smiles. Stands. Collects her things and slings her bag over her shoulder.

“Thanks, cutie,” she murmurs.

She reaches out, brushing her fingers over your shoulder in a familiar kind of way. An extra emphasis of gratitude before she spins and heads for the exit, hair bouncing in those stupid cute almost curls of hers.

Over the next few weeks, she does the same. She’ll sit down by your feet with a book or some homework, then she’ll make her way up to that seat beside you.

And the more she does it, the less you seem to notice her there. Your arms feel looser, your back doesn’t feel like someone’s tied a stick to your spine. You bump her shoulder and only blush a little. You don’t even notice when you go for a pedal and touch her knee with yours.

Soon she doesn’t even bother sitting on the floor. She just stays there with you the whole time, eyes scanning your fingers as they move along the keys, chewing on her lip and swaying her upper body with some of the melodies, her hands wedge firmly between her thighs in that insecure sort of posture. Like she’s working up the courage for something.

Every time you notice her slip her hands in that spot, you stomach knots in anticipation. Wondering if maybe today is the day you’ll find out exactly what’s going on in her head, what she’s dying to do.

You’re not dumb. You know she’s conditioned you. Earned your trust to be up on this bench like you were some wild animal that needed to be trained. Most of you really doesn’t care, though. She’s had more than a few lifetimes to learn the subtleties of humans. You’re not surprised that she can read you, the obvious simpleton, like a book.

A particularly rainy day, she’s a little slow on her exit. And it’s slow enough that you are done before she is. You walk to the entrance of the building, opening the door and stopping. Because it’s pouring. And you left your umbrella in the dorm. And of course you’re wearing the only white shirt you own.

You groan. Swiping your fingers through your hair, you look around. See if there’s some kind of path with minimum open sky. But this building is in the middle of nowhere.

Before you can really figure out what to do, though, Carmilla walks up. She glances over your shoulder to see the rain, looks at you with a trace of a pitiful smile, and sheds her leather jacket. You think maybe she’s going to hand it to and you’re ready to decline, but she doesn’t hand it to you. Instead she spreads it out as wide as it will go and holds it above your head.

“Ready when you are,” she says.

You don’t remember how to use your legs until her foot is gently prodding yours to go forward. And although every fiber of your being is screaming no don’t let her do this it isn’t right tell her to put her jacket back on, you follow her instruction.

She doesn’t make you run. She doesn’t do anything but follow at your side, holding that jacket over your head and not even seeming to notice how drenched she’s getting. You’re so embarrassed you can’t even look at her all the way back to the dorm.

And when both of you are safely to the door of the building, she opens it for you.

She holds the elevator for you.

She presses the floor number and lets you exit first.

And your cheeks are probably so red and you hope she thinks it’s from the cold but it’s not.

You’re not blushing because these are new occurrences. Exactly the opposite. She’s held the door for you and done all of it (save the jacket holding bit but you’ve never been caught in a storm before) and you hadn’t even noticed until that very moment.

She drops her jacket with a wet plop by the door and heads for the bathroom. All you have to do is shed your shoes and you’re good to crawl into bed. You pick at your nails because it’s something to do and something to keep your mind off of her and when she comes back in, she’s casually toweling her hair dry, fluffing it in half-hearted strokes until it’s no longer dripping.

“You play really well,” she says.

Oh God.

No not now.

You’re already flustered enough. Now she’s talking about it. The thing. The one thing that you two had mutually nonverbally agreed to never talk about. Never before had either of you mentioned your Wednesday night habit outside of that room. Never before had she even hinted to even actually being there.

“I, uhh, I…thank you,” you stutter out.

You see her half smile when she turns a little to the side.

“You know a lot of pieces.”

You shrug as casually as you can at the compliment that made your heart skip a little. “My old private tutor was a real bitch about it.”

“So…none of those you learned recently?” she asks.

When you look up at her voice, she’s halfway done pulling her shirt off and you quickly look away again.

“N-no.” You swallow, closing your eyes tightly as the wet t-shirt slaps the floor. “Silas isn’t really big on the arts. Don’t really have any sheet music to access.”

She hums her understanding and your eyes automatically look towards the sound. She’s unhooking her bra and a sound leaves your lips and fuck did you really just do that?

She looks over her shoulder, towel held between her teeth. But even with the obstruction, when you look again you swear you see a smugness in her eyes.

But you make a solid effort to stare at your knees for the rest of the conversation.

“Really, though,” she says a little too quietly. She’s sincere when she’s quiet and you think that’s the tone that scares you the most. “You’re really talented. I’ve heard my fair share of pianists.”

“Oh?”

She scoffs and it turns into a tired laugh.

“I sound five hundred years old half the time, don’t I?”

A smile pulls at the corner of your lips. She’s right. Her words often have a sort of wisdom to them. A tired sense of repetition and an overwhelming sense of sentimentality, when she puts in the effort.

Which all in all, usually made her end up sounding like a bitter old lady.

And it was sort of…cute.

You look up to realize you hadn’t answered, and she’s looking at you curiously.

But that’s where the conversation ends. She hurries away to go throw her clothes in the dryer. Or at least that’s the excuse she makes.

When you get back from classes on Friday, you find a stack of papers on your pillow. And sifting through them, you discover they are nothing other than sheet music for piano. The pages are old. Some of them dangerously thin, yellow with the hand of time and so very…authentic.

And it almost makes you look forward to Wednesday.

It comes around and Carmilla isn’t there. It’s odd. And your chest tightens a little in disappointment, but you situate yourself on the bench and place the sheet music along the stand, and you get to practicing.

She really knows your taste, though, for there wasn’t one piece in that stack that you weren’t utterly and completely in love with.

…

…

…

It wasn’t necessarily that you weren’t there that first day Laura practiced the sheet music. You just knew she wouldn’t be able to do it with you breathing down your neck. She had nerves from playing pieces she’d done a hundred times with you there. Learning a piece is a whole different experience. You learn it section by section, your fingers fumbling over unsteady rhythms and missed notes, over and over until just once you get it right and your body comes to life at the success. All the failures vanish from your mind for just a second.

It was a process that left the musician vulnerable. No one wants to be seen learning. They want to be seen at their best.

And you care about her. You want her to feel safe. Alive. Comfortable.

And from your perch in the hidden corner of the storage room, you watch her mess up time and time again, her brow furrowing in frustrated concentration as she squints at the notes. As she bites uselessly at her nails, eyes scanning the lines over and over again.

It’s the most innocent thing you’ve seen in a very very long time.

The hardest part of the whole thing, though, is pretending that you were never there. Is rushing back to the dorm and burying yourself in your books. Is glancing up from them when she returns and catching that heartbroken little look she gives you before she completely avoids eye contact and goes into a fifteen minute long rant to her camera.

She always deletes those.

And then one day, Tuesday night to be exact, you hear her tossing and turning in her bed and you can hear her thinking. Not actually, of course. You’re undead. Not telepathic, but it’s not hard to tell she’s got something she’s trying to ask.

You wait patiently. But also not so patiently, your heart kicks a little more than usually in your chest as you lay in the silence.

“Carmilla?” she asks quietly. “Are you awake?”

You let the question settle in the silence before you answer. “What did you need, Laura?” The name slips out in your attempt to comfort, and she sits in a longer silence than you anticipated.

“Would you…come…tomorrow?”

It’s cute how vague she is. Referencing your and her escape without wanting to actually reference it, blushing like a young girl when she tries to talk about sex.

“If you want me there, cutie,” you assure, “of course I will.”

You think that’s enough for her. She seems to be going back to sleep. You can’t feel the heavy thickness of her hardcore thinking anymore.

But then she murmurs the quietest, “I do.”

And you’re not exactly sure how you get to sleep that night with that ringing in your ears.

You meet her after class, and you two walk toward the building. You stuff your hands deep in your pockets to keep from reaching out. She looks to be doing the same, hands balled into tiny fists in her jacket pockets, but you brush it off. She’s probably doing it for some other reason.

You open the oversized door for her and she doesn’t hesitate like usual. She walks with a strange confidence and you almost have to run to keep up with her short legs in their clear destination. Who are you to pull down a girl on a mission?

And when you get there, nothing looks any different, save a slip of paper sitting on your side of the bench. You pick it up, and you can’t help but smile. It’s a sort of faux-playbill. A neatly typed page of all the songs you had given her, in order of what she was going to play them for you.

You inhale slowly.

A private concert of sorts.

Licking your lips, you exhale. And your chest is tight with…nerves. No one had ever done this for you before.

“Do…do you like?” she asks timidly.

You start, eyes darting up to meet hers. You had forgotten she was even there.

“Yeah,” you breathe. “It’s…it’s pretty slick, cutie.”

She doesn’t even try to hide the relief in her eyes.

You sit and give her a reassuring sort of smile, and she follows your lead. She starts off with one of your favorite romantic era pieces, though you really don’t want to admit all of these are your favorites.

And the entire concert, you aren’t sure what has you more mesmerized. Her or her music.

Even so, there’s the ever present nervous ache in your stomach as she draws nearer and nearer to a piece you’ve been hoping she’d play for a long time. Your thumb plays with the edge of the paper in nervous habit, but in your gut you know you’re going to do it. If she was willing to put all this together, you will gladly give her something in return.

She ends the second to last piece in a flourish of amazingly executed runs, and you almost accidentally clap. God, for someone well practiced in human ritual, you’re surprisingly almost awkward.

She sets herself up for the last piece, readjusting her weight on the bench, finding the starting chord with her fingers. And after she lets that first note ring, you find yourself singing the first line of the song, quiet, almost too raspy as your nerves build. “Sunday is gloomy,” you sing.

She falters, and you don’t miss it; she wasn’t expecting that. And you feel good knowing you can still surprise her. When she recovers and hits the next notes, you continue. The melody feels like air, like it was just meant to come out your mouth. “My hours are slumberless…Dearest the shadows I live with are numberless.”

It hits home so hard, you can feel yourself receding with the end of the bar, receding far back into your memories of…darkness, of love, of her. “Little white flowers will never awaken you,” you sing in quiet somberness, low with the falling pitch, the moving lines. “Not where the black coach of sorrow has taken you.”

Your voice gets thicker. “Angels have no thoughts of ever returning you…Would they be angry if I thought of joining you?” you end the line trembling. You can’t help it. This song, this melody, everything just feels so raw so yesterday and today and tomorrow.

“Gloomy is Sunday with shadows I spend it all. My heart and I have decided to end it all. Soon there’ll be candles and prayers that are said I know.” You look down at your lap as the line falls away from you. “But let them not weep; let them know that I’m glad to go. Death is no dream for in death I’m caressing you. With the last breath of my soul I’ll be blessing you.”

You don’t even remember singing the rest of it. All you know is that you’re singing the last lines with scary sincerity. “My heart is telling you how much I wanted you…Gloomy Sunday.”

And when you finally come back to reality you’re sitting in silence and you can feel her stare on you and there’s something wet on your cheek.

You wipe it away but of course she had already seen it. Probably before you had even noticed. But as much as you hated the silence looming over the both of you, as heavy as it felt, you wished it back after her question left her mouth.

“Was…that about Ell?”

You stare down at the keys for a long time, the question twisting a confusion in your chest. If she had asked that a century ago, the answer would’ve been yes. A decade, still yes. She could’ve asked that a sad pathetic month ago and the answer would have been the most unwavering and strong yes you could’ve mustered.

But now?

Now all you can see is Laura’s face, just as ashen and still and blank being carted away in the same stupid black carriage. Maybe the exterior was a little more limo and a little less buggy but what difference did it make? Death was still Death and He was still sitting there waiting on your shoulder to whisk everybody off. Even Laura. Might not be today or this year but give it a century and she’d be a distant mark on the world and a big open gash on your world.

You shake your head, swallowing thickly. “No. It wasn’t.” Your voice is scratchy with almost tears and you clear your throat, looking over at her only to see sad worried eyes and you have to look away again.

You’re not even original for a vampire. Same old sad sob story. Forever alone. Boo-hoo, right?

You laugh bitterly, putting your palm to your forehead as you shake away the stinging in your eyes. What the hell is wrong with you lately?

“I, uhh,” you stumble, “I just thought you might want some words to…accompany. Melody always seems so lonely without a story.”

You get up, and you glance back to see protest in her eyes, her body twisted so she can watch you leave. And you can’t even force out a goodbye as you rush away from her and out into the cold night.

…

…

…

To say things get awkward between you two would be an understatement. She avoids you at all costs, she won’t even look at you, but when you do make conversation, she acts like there’s nothing wrong and that nothing happened and it almost freaks you out how casual she is about it. You’ll ask her some pointless stupid question and she’ll laugh and answer it like the moment you stop talking to her you stop existing in her world.

And one day you just had enough of it. You wanted her back. You wanted the her that you were growing to like to come back and look at you with those stupid eyes.

So you had to do what you had to do.

You poked the angry bear with a stick.

“Why do you like jazz?” you ask her one day. No prompting. She’s just sitting there reading and you’re sitting there pretending to work.

She laughs humorlessly.

“What makes you think that’s all I like, cutie?” she mumbles without looking up, gnawing distractedly on a twizzler.

You shrug. “That’s the only stuff you really respond to. You move to it. And…and you sang—“

“Can we not talk about that?” she asks roughly, and the little sliver of her face you could see from the corner of your eye disappears further under the shield of the book cover.

“Uhh…okay…that aside, why do you?”

She yanks the twizzler away from her mouth to rip off a chunk, but beyond that she sits perfectly still, perfectly quiet. “Because it gave me something.”

She says it barely loud enough to hear, but still manages to keep tone on it, not a whisper. Actual words with the actual depth and lowness of her voice.

That’s all you expect, to be perfectly honest. That’s all she normally gives about her personal life. Vague and disappointing statements so ambiguous you might as well guess. But this time she keeps going.

“Have you ever lost touch with yourself? Like…” Her book lowers as she thinks and you catch sight of her tired eyes looking down in hard melancholy to pick out the right words. “Like you just get so caught up in stupid things that you look up and don’t remember what day it is?”

You nod. A few hard study sessions had left you confused as to what planet you were on once or twice.

She licks her lips and glances left, at some imaginary dot on her mattress, fingers curling in worried unconscious scratches in the sheets. “That’s what it was like. Getting out of that coffin after…after centuries. A new world. A new…everything. I just…” she laughs, almost angrily, shaking her head. “I just felt so disconnected to a world whose heartbeat I used to be able to feel under my feet…”

She bites her lip in contempt, tipping her head to the side like she’s considering not continuing. You try not to look too interested otherwise you know she’ll stop.

“And so I…I just wanted to relearn everything, you know? Relearn the world and who I was in it?” She exhales half a laugh. “God I must sound so dramatic.”

“No!” you exclaim a little too quickly, spinning in your chair to face her. “You were trapped in a coffin for two centuries! That’s…that’s completely fair!”

She shrugs it off. Pretends you didn’t say anything. “So I flitted around a lot. I went anywhere and everywhere just…relearning. Relearning how to fit in, relearning what the world stood for. Went to parties, went to schools. Lived.” She laughs like it was ironic. You suppose maybe it was.

“And then all of it caught up with me when Mother found me in Paris. I thought she was going to stuff me right back.”

She clenches her jaw, pulls back something that may have resembled tears in another life. “I had more useful purposes for her here, apparently. So…back I came. And I was so angry that one night I just ran and hid in this old bar. And…and this song came on, this…this style I’d never heard before and it just felt so…right, you know? Like…like it was speaking right to me.”

She licks her lips, scrapes her teeth against them and brushes away something imaginary on her cheek with her thumb. “And I dunno. It sounded…so sensual and so…lost, almost. And so I went to the library and I researched it and it was, well, jazz. And I had missed it.”

She combs her fingers through her hair and you wheel your chair a little closer. She doesn’t recoil.

“And so I…I jacked this record player.” She bites her thumb as she smiles at the memory. “And I stuffed it in the dustiest corner of the student lounge because no one ever went in there. And whenever I, uhh, had…night terrors, I’d go over there and wedge myself in the smallest space there was to offer and just listen to this one jazz album and…” she looks up at you uncertainly before continuing. “Imagine things I did in all the years I missed.” Her voice trembles a little over the last few words, but she clears her throat to rectify it.

Your heart pangs. And the way she’s looking down so somberly, her hands fidgeting, curling and uncurling in fists, isn’t helping. You feel…genuinely sorry for her.

“But if you were asking specifically about why that song?” She shrugs casually and looks to the side. “I spent a lot of years in that stupid box trying to figure out ways to kill myself. Over a girl, mind you, so that’s pretty pathetic, right?”

But the tears are in her eyes, even with the snarky bitterness of her tone. She wipes at them uselessly, head still turned like if she can’t see you then maybe you can’t see her crying. And for the first time in a long while, you want to help her. You want to…make it better.

You reach out and instantly she retracts, leaning back and turning it smoothly into a scoot so her back is against the wall, tears long forgotten in the sudden jolt of recollection that she was not, in fact, alone.

“Hey…” you try, but she waves you off.

“No, really, it’s fine. You asked; I answered.” She swipes her hair out of her eyes and looks you squarely like she does when she’s lying. Overcompensating. “Nothin’ to write home about, sweetheart.”

“Carmilla,” you protest, giving her pleading look. You don’t know what to say to make her understand. “I think it’s something to write home about.”

Her composure disintegrates. Those puppy dog eyes appear in an instant and you’ve found your opening and you’re not going to miss it this time.

“It’s important. Because any suffering you had to deal with is too much, in my opinion.”

She looks doubtful.

“You don’t deserve any of it.”

This time, she scoffs.

“I kidnapped hundreds of girls—“

“And you’ve spent hundreds of years trying to make it right.” This time it’s you who looks her right in the eye. Because she needs to understand. “Do you think a bad person would do that? An evil person? Carmilla when are you going to wake up and realize that you are the best of humanity and you’re not even humanity!” You laugh at the irony as you throw your hands up. You’re so frustrated you stand in a flourish, ready for standard Laura paces and talks mode. “Sure you’re a little heavy on the sarcasm and the overdramatic dark vibe but if you think that fools me for even a second then you’re a stupider genius than I thought—“

You spin on your heels to pace back toward her bed but she’s already standing right in front of you. Way too close, breath heavy, eyes looking down at your lips so hungrily you’re surprised she’s still standing there.

“Can I…kiss you?” she asks quietly, like if she said it low enough it wouldn’t count as vocalizing it.

You’re stunned, and even with your breath quite literally taken away, eyes in a constant back and forth between her lips and her eyes, you can’t help but exhale a nervous laugh. “You’re asking? That’s…chivalrous of you.”

She licks her lips, inhales shakily through her nose. “Well…I am the best of humanity as someone so…eloquently put.”

Your heart catches.

“I, uhh, I…” Your brain wants to say yes but you forget how to actually relay that and you’re tripping over everything inside of you to rush out the stupid “yes” that comes out in a muddled exhale.

She takes it in stride, bringing her hand up to hold the side of your neck, to pull you in that last inch for a gentle sort of kiss. You can feel the wound on your neck give an extra hard throb underneath her palm, and she presses into you, careful, slow. So careful and slow it barely feels like enough when she pulls away.

Your next breath is shaky and hers matches. And it makes you smile.

“You’re…you’re just gonna run with the chivalrous comment, aren’t you?”

She smiles half a smile, stroking your jaw with her thumb. “I’ve gotta live up to expectations, cupcake.”


End file.
